


The Howling Abyss

by Nemo_the_Everbeing



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 1960s, Crack Pairing, M/M, cosmic horror, getting turned on by the Void, horrific middle-aged sorcerers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing/pseuds/Nemo_the_Everbeing
Summary: They came together once or twice every century, those two old and terrible souls.  They had danced this dance since men wore silk hose and had buckles on their shoes.  In the 1960s, Simon Fairchild called Nathaniel Lukas about a recent acquisition, and such a meeting occurred.





	The Howling Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this some time ago for a crack pairing challenge on Tumblr, and finally got around to posting it over here. It's not betaed, and all mistakes are mine, but I still like it.

The smoke hung heavy in the room, catching in the heavy drapes in ways Simon found aesthetically pleasing.  Everything there was set up to please him: the sights, the heavy scent of cannabis and stranger drugs, the occasional distant sound of wind or screaming.  It was the little things in life that made it worth living.

Well, that wasn’t quite correct.  It was the incomprehensibly enormous, unfathomable gods that lay just outside of the human ability to touch or comprehend that made life worth living, but the drapes were nice too.

Simon took a long, bubbling drag on his hookah, and smiled when the knock came at his parlor door.  It was a lovely thing, that door.  It was laid in when he had built the estate, and he'd painted it a glorious shade of violet.  When the paint had begun to peel, he'd covered violet with turquoise, and that with a vibrant green, and that with yellow.  Each time he repainted, he refused to strip the old paint, knowing that in a few decades he would get to see his past again, revealing itself in strips and the bubbles of water damage.  There was some wonderful metaphor in that, as well as a very nice rainbow.   

The old family estate had seen better days, it was true.  He had considered having it patched up, but Simon was between children living at home, so there was no one to do mundane tasks like hiring help.  They’d come back eventually, when one of them had a child of their own that needed educating in the family business.  Until then, he didn't need more space, and didn't mind the sense of ruin about him.  Or maybe he could acquire new friends, open the doors to some young minds eager to be expanded.  That sounded delightful.  They would appreciate his door.

“Come in, Nathaniel, dear,” he called.

The rainbow door opened, and Nathaniel Lukas entered with a moue of distaste.  Simon beamed at him.  Nathaniel was a dreadful bore of a man, but he also understood Simon on a level even his own family couldn’t.  They were both old souls, far older than they appeared.  They had seen the fall of the Empire, plagues, and more wars than any one man ought.  And while death on a grand scale could be fascinating, it grew tiresome when it was so perpetually pointless.  Deaths should hold meaning, in Simon's mind.  They should serve some grand purpose at the feet of the incomprehensible, or why die at all?  He'd certainly never had a compelling enough reason to give it a go. 

It was good to have a time of peace again, to spend some time thinking and playing and searching for his gods.  It was even better that it was time of love and drugs, as well.  He hadn’t had a proper period of indulgence since the 1880s and the year he’d spent in the loving arms of the green fairy (metaphorical, rather than the literal year he spent in green arms—very different experience, that).  The drugs he was supplied in ample quantities, through various sources.  The love, on the other hand ...

Nathaniel looked painfully smart in his black trousers and jacket and thin tie.  His hair was brushed back from his gaunt face, but at least he hadn’t slicked it down the way he had in the 1940s.  He’d looked like a bird caught in an oil spill for a decade.

“This pile wants demolished,” Nathaniel said, a scowl etching the lines around his mouth to deep voids. 

Simon rather thought Nathaniel would like the metaphor, and shared it.  Nathaniel’s scowl deepened, and Simon couldn’t decide if that was disapproval or vanity.

“And this room,” Nathaniel went on, “is disreputable.  It’s beneath you.”

Beneath ‘us’, he meant.  Beneath the two of them, ancient and strange and entwined since the Regency.  Beneath their families, too.  Simon scoffed.  He’d seen the monstrous estate in Kent, cold and tomb-like.  He loved his shambling, overgrown home.  He returned to the idea of turning it into a commune until his children returned.  The more he thought about it, the better an idea it seemed.  All those young people were deliberately setting out to find new ways of looking at the world.  He had seen their art and listened to the music they wrote when high on mundane drugs.  How glorious could they be with his help?

“This room is me, dear boy,” Simon said.  He didn’t bother rising from the pile of pillows he had arranged near the hookah.  He did open his arms to encompass the tatty drapes hanging from the ceiling, the cobwebs, the objects tucked into the corners and emanating the quiet, maddening power of distant worlds and incomprehensible geometry.

Nathaniel snorted and looked away from him.  “What do you want?” he asked.

“That is the eternal question, isn’t it?  What do I want?  I want knowledge.  I want to touch the face of the great and terrible gods.  I want to lose my mind to them.  I want their gazes to turn on me so that I might truly exist for that single moment before annihilation.”  He dropped his voice to a lower register.  It rumbled in the quiet of the room and shivered through the smoke.  “I want the void open before me, impossible and limitless.  I want my mind to howl into that nothingness with no echo.”  Simon watched Nathaniel’s eyelids flutter and his fist clench as he shivered in time with the smoke.  He was so predictable.  Nathaniel continued, “I want to comprehend nothingness on a level that humanity scurries and shrinks away from.  I want to love it.”  He patted the pillows next to him.  “Come and lie down, Nathaniel.  Weariness makes you look like a corpse.”

Nathaniel seemed to snap out of whatever half-daze he had fallen into at the mention of the void.  “That’s not why I’m here,” he said.  “You said you found something.  Did you find the door?  Is that why you called me?”

“I will explain when you stop looming.”

Nathaniel hesitated the long moment it took to assert his own independence.  It was delightful.  Even more delightful, of course, was when he gave in and stalked over to the pillows, folding himself down upon them with a grace Simon had never possessed.  No one ought to sit so ramrod straight on something that comfortable.  “Explain,” he said.

Simon offered him the pipe.

Nathaniel, predictably, looked furious.  “Explain.”

“As you will,” Simon said, not wanting to push him too far.  He was enjoying the visit.  He enjoyed all their visits.  “Unfortunately, it appears that I’ve found a window, rather than a door.  A thinning of the veil, but not a proper tear.”

“I loathe it when you use such ridiculous terminology.  You sound like one of those hippies.”  He sniffed.  “You look like one too.  No man ought to wear that many beads.”

“Beads make lovely sounds.  Hush.  I was telling you about the window.”

“Go on.” 

“It is more to your taste than mine, I’m sad to admit.  I must have sent five—no, six—of my little friends in to check.  They found nothing.  Not even a trace of an eye or the hint of a spine on the horizon.  Wherever it was, They had quite abandoned it.  All quite disappointing.”

Nathaniel looked hungry in the singular way that sharpened his cheekbones to razors and set his eyes burning.  The tiniest prick of color showed itself on each of his cheeks.  There was life in the old boy yet.  “The void?” Nathaniel demanded.  “Is it true, or limited?”

“Unlimited so far as my friends were concerned, but it’s difficult to say if there are limits to something that vast.  And I don’t have the patience to spend a decade exploring something so outside my area of interest.”

“Show me.”

“Apparently you haven’t patience, either.”

Nathaniel’s dry fingers dug into Simon’s cheek, and his face was inches to Simon's in an instant.  Nathaniel had twisted about, viper-quick, and was now pressed half-atop Simon.  He was doing his best to loom, which had always been a particularly good look on him.  It looked even better with the deepening of the lines on his face, and the gray that now painted his temples.  They were ageing, the two of them, in inches; not eternal, but merely slowed.  Someday, perhaps in 50 years, age would have truly caught them, and they would shrink and wither.  It didn’t matter.  The body was trappings, decoration, but it wasn’t all of him.  No more than the gray skin and the ashy smell of old cloth and death was all of Nathaniel. 

Did Nathaniel know how hungrily he pressed in, how much Simon treasured these meetings?  Nathaniel disdained touch until he didn't, until he craved and burned.  “Show me,” he rasped, voice like air escaping desiccated lungs.  Simon couldn’t decide if he was ordering or begging.  A bit of both, probably.

“Oh, darling, how long has it been?”

“I’ve been looking since the turn of the century.  There’s been no trace of the void.  Everywhere I look, it’s noise and life and bustle.  Even in the remotest locations there are animals and insects crawling over everything.  It’s horrid.  The world needs slowed.”

Simon nuzzled against Nathaniel’s cheek.  It was a promising sign that he didn’t draw away.  Simon took a long draw on his pipe and let the cannabis and tobacco and molasses and older, richer, stranger drugs buzz about his head until clarity swept through him.  He brought his mouth close to Nathaniel’s, and let the smoke wash between them as he spoke.  “The world needs cracked open like an egg, darling Nathaniel, spilling us all out into the wash of eternity.”  Nathaniel shuddered against him, sinking down so that Simon could rest back comfortably against the pillows.  The haze of smoke and drugs hung between them, drawn in with every breath.

Nathaniel still needed to breathe.  That was good to know.

“Endless and hollow and perfect,” Nathaniel said, as though they were summoning it with their thoughts, as though there was more power in the room than the totems and statues and drugs.  And there was, oh there was.  So much power trapped in these old bones, now pressing together.  Was there more power in them like this, together, than there was apart?  Or were they void unto themselves, forever separate even when they were connected as intimately as two bodies could be?

“And in that darkness, in that perfect, ecstatic void, They wait,” Simon whispered, rapturous.

“No.”  Nathaniel’s hair was coming forward, and it brushed against Simon’s face as he shook his head.  “No, there’s a void somewhere out there that even They haven’t touched.  I will find it.  I will.”

“Would you sink into its oblivion, becoming oblivion yourself?”

“Yes.”  The word hissed between Nathaniel’s teeth.  His face was set in a rictus grin, his bones pressing in against Simon like a hungry ghoul.  He was horrid and wondrous, and Simon had absolutely no option but to kiss him.

They came together like this so rarely, crashing together perhaps twice a century since they started this dance.  Had Simon anticipated this result when he had rung Nathaniel up that morning?  He hadn’t thought so at the time, but there in the pillows it felt as though he had been waiting decades.  As though he had held his breath, and was only now releasing it.  No maddening statues or arcane drugs could match the sharp angles of his bones, the scrape of his fingers on Simon's back, or the aching noises he let out when he was thoroughly overwhelmed.

Nathaniel still kissed like he was starving, his cold lips drawing on Simon’s warmth.  Simon never minded it; he had warmth to share.  He adored how dry Nathaniel was, and the soft rustling sounds his skin made as he moved.  They were so good at hiding, the two of them, at pretending to be like fleeting, ordinary people.  Simon could understand Nathaniel’s loathing of those scampering, butterfly-brief lives, even if he didn’t share it.

“Would you come with me?” Nathaniel asked between kisses.  His skin was gray this close, his eyes a bit filmed.  Simon was pleased he was so relaxed already.  “Would you go with me into the dark?”

“Oh, my dear.  It would rather defeat the point if there were two of us there, wouldn’t it?”

Nathaniel had a beautiful chuckle that he really ought to use more.  “I suppose it would.”

“Go and find your perfect dark.  Melt into it.”  Nathaniel melted against him agreeably enough, all sharp angles and rustling flesh.  “I shall find my gate and finally commune with the great and unknowable beings beyond.  I shall open the door and share Them with the whole world.”

“I will almost regret missing that,” Nathaniel said.  “Almost.”

Then Nathaniel initiated a kiss, which was very rare indeed.  The universe was full of wonders.  “Show me,” he said against Simon’s mouth.  “Show me the void.”

Simon reached out and drew the box close.  There was a gamble inherent in this gesture that Nathaniel wouldn’t be so immediately taken by the window that he would take it and leave.  But he seemed comfortable enough, and his kisses enthusiastic enough, that Simon thought he was likely to have the pleasure of Nathaniel’s company some hours more.  Perhaps even days.  Nathaniel's whims were fickle, though he would be loath to admit it.

The box itself was delightfully unassuming.  One might even imagine it a small children’s music box, just large enough to pass a hand into.  It was made of a rich brown wood, and was unadorned. 

Simon broke the kiss with his free hand in Nathaniel’s hair.  He was delighted when Nathaniel deigned to rest his head on Simon’s chest when he turned to look at the box.  “That’s it?” he asked.  He didn’t sound disappointed.

“It is.  I heard about it through a contact, some young Indonesian chap, I think.  He likes to find and sell this sort of thing.  Exorbitantly priced, of course, but what does that matter?”

He flicked the latch on the box, and then gently opened the lid.  The cold within it was aching, and he tipped the box onto its side so Nathaniel could see.  It really was a window.  Just a peek into a world made of seemingly endless ice, smooth and bright as a mirror.  There was no proper horizon to it, but rather the ice itself seemed to curve up and become the cold, white sky.  There was no movement, no wind or life.  Just the perfect symmetry of that ice.  Even if it wasn't to Simon's tastes, he could admit how beautiful it was.

Nathaniel made a noise in his throat like he was dying.  His hips rolled, and he pressed his face against Simon's throat as though he needed to take a moment to control himself.  Simon loved him at times like this.  At all times, really, and maybe especially when they were trying to kill one another.  Nathaniel was at his most magnificent when he was attempting some sort of vicious dispatch.

“Don’t touch it,” Simon whispered.  “If you put your hand inside, the rest of you is dragged in as well.  It seemed quite painful, and altogether not survivable.  I tried to get several friends through before I had to give up and close that wing of the house.  There was such a dreadful mess.”

“I thought I smelled something.”

“I should have known you’d pick up on that.  You can have what’s left, of course.  If you want it.”

“Maybe later.”  Nathaniel passed his fingers as near to the opening of the box as he could, shivering with the cold.  “It’s exquisite.”

“Have it,” Simon said, pushing it just out of their reach, but leaving it open to spill cold and the sharp smell of ozone into the room.  “It may not be the infinite void, but nothing lives there.  I can guarantee that.”

“Is it the same view everywhere, or does it move as you do?”

“It moves.  A portable view of a dead world, and a very effective way to rid one of an enemy.”  He refrained from adding, ‘How’s that for a romantic gesture?’ but was fairly certain it shone in his eyes regardless. 

Nathaniel slowly drew his fingers away from the box, then cupped Simon’s face in that hand.  It was a cold that lanced bone-deep and made Simon hiss with the shock of it.  Nathaniel pressed a kiss to the ear on the other side of Simon's head, and his cold lips felt warm in comparison to that hand.  “Messy, though,” he whispered.  “I abhor a mess.”

“Then only use it for special occasions.  A treat to be savored.”

“You would know all about that.”

“I savor every treat.”

Natahaniel drew back to look down on Simon.  “You’re a disreputable old hippie who stinks of patchouli,” he said warmly.

“And you’re cadaverous enough you make me question my sensibilities.”

“You have no sensibilities.” 

"You may be right."

They sunk down together.  The cold wrapped around them in fingers from below, and the smoke wrapped around them from above.  Nathaniel tasted of earth and felt like dry gangrene under Simon’s fingers.  Every bone exposed as Simon removed his clothing looked razor sharp and scarcely contained.  But Nathaniel smelled of stratospheric heights, and in the film of his eyes Simon saw the howling abyss.


End file.
